Tender, Profound Examination Of An American Family Delves Into The Life Choices We Make.

Ignore the Grisham-esque title. Peel back the slick packaging and move beyond the blurbs touting The Corrections as a dysfunctional family docudrama. Instead, delve into Jonathan Franzen's third novel and discover its genius. With The Corrections, Franzen has painted a portrait of the modern-day American family as vivid and evocative as Grant Woods' American Gothic.

Meet Alfred Lambert, the paterfamilias. A railroad engineer and occasional inventor, Alfred worked hard putting food on the table for a wife and three children he didn't understand. Now in his 70s and suffering from Parkinson's-induced dementia, Alfred haunts his Iowa farmhouse. He has been painting the same wicker loveseat for nearly a year. His wife, Enid, is anxious and alienated. At a loss over Alfred, she finds it easier to fuss in the kitchen over Jell-O and ham loaf. She dreams incessantly over Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful magazines.

Franzen's depiction of the Lamberts is scorchingly realistic. But by turns it is tender and humorous, too. Centering the narrative on just a few events -- predominantly Christmas -- has enabled Franzen to delve into the core of his characters, laying them bare.

Essential to this family is, of course, their children. Now nearing 40, each seems on the brink of -- or is deeply embedded in -- a midlife crisis. The eldest, Gary, is trapped in a loveless marriage. His dazzling wife uses their children to manipulate him. His brother, Chip, has just lost his job as an English professor. Kicked off campus for stalking a student, Chip is now failing as a writer in New York. Denise, the youngest, seems on the surface to be the most put-together: She is a celebrated chef at a restaurant in Philadelphia. Denise, however, is having an affair with her boss' wife.

Ultimately, what The Corrections concerns are these kind of crises. How do we "correct" our mistakes and forge new paths, when the ones we have chosen are wrong? Some of these mistakes cannot be corrected: Alfred will never be the man Enid wants him to be; the Lamberts will never measure up, in her eyes, to their ostentatious and perfectly "normal" neighbors. Nor can any of these characters go back and change the decisions they have made. But they can -- and do -- survive them.

In the end, The Corrections emerges as a tender and profound look at modern life. It does occasionally lapse into fantasy, most spectacularly when Chip accompanies the estranged husband of his live-in lover to Lithuania to get rich quick off the Internet. These lapses, however, are rare. They do not detract from what is otherwise a brilliant and detailed look at life's failures and what we make of them. This is a novel about growing up, growing old and moving on.